Down to Earth c-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Living in a straw-roofed stone hut didn’t help her recover. She and Liu Mei had more space to themselves than they’d enjoyed back in the Peking rooming houses in which they’d lived, but that was the only advantage she could see. A dirt floor meant everything was filthy all the time. The well was far away. The water that came from it was unpurified, too. It had given her a flux of the bowels, and had given her daughter a nastier one.

  But worse than all that was the feeling of emptiness, of disconnectedness, she had. Ever since she’d come to Peking, she’d been at the center of the revolutionary struggle against the imperialist scaly devils. News from all over the city, from all over China, from all over the world, had flowed in to her. Now she heard nothing but village gossip. One other thing her memory had failed to hold was how boring and picayune village gossip was.

  To her annoyance, Nieh Ho-T’ing seemed to drop into the narrow world of the village as if he’d never seen Peking a day in his life. He was older than she, and came from a wealthier family than she did. But he fit right in, and she didn’t.

  He laughed at her when she complained. “You have lived among the bourgeoisie too long,” he said. “A little reeducation will do you good.”

  “Oh, yes, it will be splendid-if I live through it,” Liu Han answered. “I don’t want my bones to end up here, where nobody knows or cares who I am. And I certainly don’t want Liu Mei to have to stay here for the rest of her life to tend to my grave. She would be buried here even more than I was.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Nieh said. “When things calm down, we’ll be moving on. We’ll get in touch with the others who got out of Peking, too, and with the ones who weren’t in Peking at all, and we’ll start up the struggle again. We don’t need to hurry. The dialectic is certain.”

  “The dialectic is certain,” Liu Han repeated. She believed that, as she’d believed in the endless gods and spirits of the countryside back when she was nothing but a peasant. But the gods and spirits of the countryside had failed against both the Japanese and the little scaly devils, and the dialectic, however much she believed in it, did not seem to be holding its own against the little devils. She said what was in her heart: “Losing Peking hurt.”

  “Of course it did,” Nieh said. “The People’s Liberation Army has been hurt before, though, and worse than this. Chiang and the Kuomintang reactionaries thought they’d destroyed us a generation ago, but we made the Long March and kept fighting. And we will keep fighting here, too, till we win, however long it takes.”

  “However long it takes.” Liu Han repeated that, too. She saw time stretching out as a river before her, a river longer than the Yangtze. Where along that river lay the port named Red Victory? Was there such a port at all, or did the river of time just flow into the sea called Forever? She wondered if she’d live long enough to find out.

  She didn’t share the conceit with Nieh Ho-T’ing. He might accuse her of trying to set up as a poet. That she could deal with. But he might also accuse her of defeatism, an altogether more serious business.

  Next morning, just before sunrise, a motorcar rolled into the village. Music, both Chinese-style and the raucous noise the little scaly devils enjoyed, blared from the speakers mounted on top of the car. A man’s voice-a recording, Liu Han realized after a moment-called out, “Come see how much we are all alike, little scaly devils and human beings! Come see! Come see!”

  “This is a new sort of propaganda,” Liu Mei observed, spooning up the last of her barley porridge.

  “So it is.” Liu Han sipped tea, then sighed. “I suppose we’d better go find out what kind of new propaganda it is.”

  She set down her cup and stepped out of the hut where she’d been living. Liu Mei followed. The motorcar, Liu Han saw, was of the scaly devils’ manufacture, and was of a make she knew to be armored. It carried several little devils with body armor and rifles, and one who came out unarmed.

  “I greet you, people of this village,” that one said, speaking Chinese as well as Liu Han had ever heard a little scaly devil do. “For too long, your kind and mine have been enemies. Part of the reason we have fought, I think, is that we have believed we are more different than is so.”

  “A very new sort of propaganda,” Liu Mei murmured. Liu Han nodded. The scaly devil reminded her of the fast-talking merchants of Peking, who all did their best to sell people things they neither wanted nor needed. But what was this little devil selling?

  He didn’t leave her in suspense for long. “You Chinese people reverence your ancestors,” he said. “Is it not so?” Here and there in the crowd that had gathered around the motorcar, people nodded. Liu Han found herself nodding, too, and made herself stop with a grimace of annoyance. If only she hadn’t been talking with Nieh Ho-T’ing the day before. The scaly devil went on, “We, too, give reverence to the spirits of our Emperors, our Emperors dead. Their spirits comfort us when we die. They can comfort your spirits when you die, if only you will also give them reverence while you are still living.”

  Having thought of Nieh, Liu Han looked around for him. There he was, looking like a peasant who was starting to get old. She caught his eyes. One of his eyebrows rose a little. She’d known him a long time, and understood what that meant-he was taking seriously what the scaly devil said.

  “We have big shrines in big cities,” the little devil went on. “But in a village like this, we do not need a big shrine. A small one will do. We have one here.” He gestured to the armed scaly devils. Two of them opened the motorcar’s boot and took out what looked like a large, polished-metal headstone for a Christian grave. The little devil who spoke Chinese said, “Where is the village headman?”

  No one said anything. No one came forward. Liu Han took that as a good sign. Had the village headman admitted who he was, his next step at collaboration might have been to tell the scaly devil Communists were hiding there.

  “I mean no harm to anybody,” the scaly devil said. When silence stretched, he continued, “Somebody, anybody, then, please tell me, where can we plant this shrine in the ground in the village without angering anyone? We do not wish to cause anger. Our spirits and yours should be together.”

  Liu Han had never heard language like that from a little scaly devil. It was good propaganda, very good propaganda. If they’d used propaganda like that from the moment they came to Earth, many more people would have been reconciled to their rule. She stared around the crowd with worry in her eyes.

  To her vast relief, people still stood silent. The little devil who spoke Chinese gave a very humanlike shrug. He said, “All right, then, if you do not tell me, we will place it here, near the edge of this little square. As I say, we do not mean to anger anyone. I will also tell you one other thing. We will know how you treat this shrine. We will know if you offer to it. You do not have to do that, but we wish you would. We will know if you harm it, too. If you do that, we will come back and punish you. You need to understand that.”

  He turned an eye turret to the males holding the shrine and spoke in his own language. A couple of the males took the shrine over to one edge of the square, where it would be visible but would not get in the way. The one who spoke Chinese had chosen well. The other two planted the shrine in the ground. Then all the little scaly devils got back into the armored motorcar and drove away.

  As soon as they were gone, villagers crowded around Liu Han, Liu Mei, and Nieh Ho-T’ing. “You come from the city,” a woman said to Liu Han. “Can it be true, what the ugly scaly devil told us? If we take down that piece of polished metal and smash it, will the little devils know?”

  “I don’t know if they will, but they might,” Liu Han admitted reluctantly. “They are very good at making tiny machines that tell them all sorts of things.”

  A man asked, “Are they putting up one of these shrines in every village?”

  “How can I know that? Am I in every village?” Liu Han knew she sounded irritable, but she couldn’t help it. Yes, she felt cut off from t
he world, here in a village without even a wireless set or a telegraph line. And she was worried. If the scaly devils had put up a shrine in one no-account village, they were surely putting up shrines in a lot of them if not in all.

  Another man said, “The scaly devils are strong. Their ancestors must be strong, too. How can it hurt if we burn paper goods in front of their shrine, the way we do for our own ancestors? Maybe the spirits of the little devils will like us if we do that. Maybe they will help us if we do that.”

  “You will be doing what the little devils want if you make offerings to the spirits of their dead,” Liu Han said. Listening, she heard her daughter and Nieh Ho-T’ing saying the same thing, saying it ever louder and more stridently.

  But the villagers didn’t listen. “If we do this, the little devils are more likely to leave us alone,” one of them said. Before long-even before people went out to the fields-automobiles and big houses and liquor bottles and other offerings, all made of paper, went up in smoke before the metal shrine.

  Sick with defeat, Liu Han went out to grub away weeds in the millet fields around the village. She tore them from the ground with savage ferocity. Her ancestors got no offerings, but the dead Emperors did. Where was the justice in that?

  And if the villagers made offerings to the dead Emperors, wouldn’t that lead them toward accepting the little scaly devils as their rightful rulers? The scaly devils had to think so, or they wouldn’t have come out with all these shrines. They had a long history of oppressing and co-opting people-or rather, other kinds of devils-they’d beaten in war. Liu Han knew that.

  The dialectic said the little devils were doomed: progressive forces would overwhelm them. “But when?” Liu Han asked the millet waving gently in the breeze. “When?” She got no answer. The millet would be there regardless of whether people or little scaly devils ruled the land. Cursing, Liu Han got back to work.

  These days, the Russies had to pay only a pound to admit the whole family into services on a Friday night or Saturday morning. “See, it is cheaper now,” said one of the Lizards collecting the fee at the door. “Nothing to get upset about.”

  Moishe Russie went past the male without a word. Reuven, younger, was more inclined to argue. “It isn’t right that we should have to pay anything,” he said. “People should be free to worship any way they please.”

  “No one stops you,” the Lizard answered in hissing Hebrew. “You worship any way you please. But if you do not go to the shrine to Emperors past, you have to pay. That is all. It is a small thing.”

  “It’s wrong,” Reuven insisted.

  “It’s wrong to block the door,” someone behind him called. “That’s what’s wrong.” Muttering, Reuven went into the synagogue.

  As usual, he and his father sat together in the men’s section. As usual, lately before services, conversation centered on the worship tax. Someone asked, “Has anybody actually gone to see what sort of shrine the Lizards have for their Emperors?”

  “I would never even look,” somebody else said. “I wouldn’t go to a church, I wouldn’t go to a mosque, and I don’t see how this is any different.”

  That drew several nods of agreement, Moishe Russie’s among them. But the man who’d asked the question said, “The Lizards never persecuted us, the way Christians and Muslims have. If it weren’t for the Lizards, a lot of us in this room would be dead. If that isn’t different, what is it?”

  “It isn’t different enough,” insisted the other fellow who’d spoken. That started a fine, almost Talmudic, discussion of degrees of difference and when different was different enough.

  With the argument going on, services seemed almost irrelevant. And, sure enough, as soon as they were done, the discussion picked up again. “Confound it, Russie, you’re supposed to be able to fix tsuris like this,” somebody said to Reuven’s father. “Why haven’t you gone and done it?”

  “Do you think I haven’t tried?” Moishe Russie said. “I’ve talked to the fleetlord. And I’ve talked even more to his adjutant, because Atvar is sick of talking with me. All I can tell you is, the Lizards aren’t going to change their minds about this.”

  “Does anybody actually go to the shrine they built here?” someone else asked.

  “I’ve seen some people do it,” Reuven said. “A few Christians, a few Muslims… a few of us, too.”

  “Disgraceful.” Three men said the same thing at the same time.

  “I don’t think the world will end,” Reuven said. “I wouldn’t care to do it myself, though.”

  “The world may not end if a few Jews go to this shrine,” Moishe Russie said heavily, “but we haven’t got so many Jews that we can afford to waste even a few.” Reuven had a hard time disagreeing with that.

  And then, the next Monday, he’d just got into his seat at the medical college when the Lizard physician named Shpaaka said, “You Tosevites here are an elite. You have the privilege of learning from us medical techniques far more sophisticated than any your own kind would have developed for many years to come. Is this not a truth?”

  “It is truth, superior sir,” Reuven chorused along with the rest of the young men and women in his class.

  “I am glad you concede this,” Shpaaka told them. “Because you are an elite, more is expected from you than from other Tosevites. Is this not also a truth?”

  “It is truth, superior sir,” Reuven repeated with his classmates. He wondered what the Lizard was getting at. Most days, almost all days, Shpaaka simply started lecturing, and heaven help the students who couldn’t keep up.

  Today, though, he continued, “Because you are privileged, you also have responsibilities beyond the ordinary. Another truth, is it not so?”

  “Another truth, superior sir,” Reuven said dutifully. He wasn’t the only one puzzled now. Half the class looked confused.

  “One of the responsibilities you have is to the Race,” Shpaaka said. “In learning our medicine, you also learn our culture. Yet you do not participate in our culture as fully as we would like. We are going to take steps to correct this unfortunate situation. I realize we should have done this sooner, but we have only just reached consensus on the point ourselves.”

  Jane Archibald caught Reuven’s eye-not hard, because his gaze had a way of sliding toward her every so often anyhow. What he talking about? she mouthed. Reuven shrugged one shoulder. He didn’t know, either.

  A moment later, Shpaaka finally got around to the point: “Because you are privileged to attend the Moishe Russie Medical College and learn the Race’s medical techniques, we do not think it unjust that you should also learn more of the Race’s way of doing things. Accordingly, from this time forward, you shall be required to attend the shrine in this city dedicated to the spirits of Emperors past at least once every twenty days as a condition for attending this college.”

  Shpaaka insisted on decorum in his lecture hall. Normally, he had no trouble getting it and keeping it. This was not a normal morning. Instead of holding up their hands and waiting to be recognized, his human students shouted for attention. Reuven was as loud as any of them, louder than most.

  “Silence!” Shpaaka said, but he got no silence. “This is most unseemly,” he went on. The racket just got louder. He spoke again: “If there is no silence, I shall end lectures for today and for as long as seems necessary. Are you more attached to the pursuit of knowledge or to your superstitions?”

  In answer to that, Reuven shouted loud enough to make himself heard through the din from his fellow students: “Are you more attached to teaching your knowledge or to teaching your superstitions?”

  Shpaaka drew back behind his lectern, plainly affronted. “We teach the truth in all matters,” he declared.

  “How many spirits of Emperors past have returned to tell you so?” Reuven shot back. “Have you ever seen one? Has anybody ever seen one?”

  “You are impertinent,” Shpaaka said. He was right, too, and Reuven wasn’t the only one being impertinent, either-far from it. The Lizard w
ent on, “Anyone refusing to give reverence to the spirits of Emperors past shall not continue at this college. I dismiss you all. Think on that.”

  He left the lecture hall, but the clamor didn’t die down behind him. Some of the students, the ones without much religion of their own, didn’t care one way or the other. Others did care, but cared more about what would happen to them if they were forced from the medical college.

  Reuven and the Muslim students seemed most upset. “My father will kill me if I go home to Baghdad without finishing my medical studies,” Ibrahim Nuqrashi said. “But if I bow before idols, he will torture me and then kill me-and I would not blame him for doing it. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.”

  No one would kill Reuven, or torture him, either, if he went to the shrine the Lizards had built here in Jerusalem. Even so, he couldn’t imagine such a thing, not for himself. The Nazis had wanted to kill his family and him for being Jews. He couldn’t slough that off like a snake shedding its skin.

  He made his way over toward Jane Archibald. She nodded to him. “What are you going to do?” she asked, seeming to understand his dilemma.

  Except it wasn’t a dilemma, not really. “I’m coming to say goodbye,” he answered. “I’m not going to stay. I can’t stay.”

  “Why not?” she asked-no, she didn’t understand everything that was on his mind. “I mean, it’s not as if you believe everything that’s in the Bible, is it?”

  “No, of course not,” he answered. He bit his lip; he didn’t know how to explain it, not so it made rational sense. It didn’t make rational sense to him, either, not altogether. He tried his best: “If I went to the Lizards’ shrine, I’d be letting down all the Jews who came before me, that’s all.”

  Jane cocked her head to one side, studying him. “I almost feel I ought to be jealous. I can’t imagine taking the Church of England so seriously.”

  “So you’ll go to the shrine, then?” Reuven asked.